Krista Quarles was an executive at Playdom when it was acquired by Disney, before later becoming CEO of Corel Corporation.
Insight
Quarles: Wealthy People Falsely Attribute Success to Skill Over Luck
“Oh my God, like, there's just so much more capable. Like, it's not luck that I'm just really that much better than everyone else. I think that's the goalie. I think understanding the importance of preparation, meeting opportunity, i.e. Luck, that's an importan…”
Insight
Quarles: 150 Employees Is a Company's Most Significant Scaling Breakpoint
“Companies tend to break at 50 people, because it's like, you used to be able to just get everybody in the room, and like shout at them, or put them in a Slack channel, and tell them what to do, and you knew every single person, and you could direct everything …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Quarles: OpenTable Failed to Give Its Product Away Free in Palo Alto
“We picked a street in Palo Alto and I said, give it all away for free. I said, I don't care. Don't charge anything. I just want to see if we can get a hundred percent of the restaurants on the street. And what was interesting was they came back and we literall…”
What-if
Quarles: OpenTable Pay Would Succeed Today Due to Modernized POS Infrastructure
“Had that launched now, it'd be wildly successful because you think, see food delivery businesses and other things like that have changed the paradigm of what point of sale looks like in a restaurant, but we were just early.”
Insight
Quarles: A CEO Operates Three Months Ahead of Their Organization's Perception
“My time equals zero is always, like, three months before it hits everybody else, so I have to recognize, like, they're just seeing this for the first time. You've already been processing it”
Insight
Quarles: Remaining Stuck Is More Dangerous to Performance Than Falling
“I think that's the most dangerous place for anybody to be is the stuck state. Falling, fine, all right, I know what I'm dealing with, you know, ugly truth, fine, bring it on, let's go, let's, now I know what to do. It's that, that moment before you let yoursel…”